Greetings

With all of you around the world, I am most pleased to be able to celebrate the International Animation Day together, simultaneously on and around October 28th. ASIFA and ASIFA-JAPAN has been working many years for the development of animation art culture. It is our sincere hope that, through animation art, many people will deepen its mutual understanding toward different cultures, and promote international cross-cultural exchanges. I truly hope that the manifestation of International Animation Day, participated by approximately 40 countries, will also serve as an effective opportunity for cultural exchanges.

In August 2012, during the 14th Hiroshima International Animation Festival, ASIFA-JAPAN held a special exhibition commemorating its 30th anniversary. We were pleased to introduce talents and works of each member to celebrate the history of our activities of three decades. ASIFA-JAPAN is consisted of animation filmmakers and animation professionals working in the front line of our industry, and this exhibition clearly showed how our members are gifted with wonderful talents. I am very proud that, every year, our International Animation Day has been organized voluntarily by such members full of talents and abilities.

This year, we will be holding International Animation Day 2012 in four cities --- Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Hiroshima ---, and will be showing many high quality animation films of Japan and from abroad.

I truly hope that many people will join us and enjoy animation!

Sayoko Kinoshita
Vice President, ASIFA
President, ASIFA-JAPAN